That Hing Thing

Asafoetida (Hing) - resin chips and powder

If you want to make popadoms you need asafoetida, aka Hing.

This bit of trivia caught my attention while watching an edition of National Geographic's "Food Factory" featuring the famous women's cooperative - Sri Mahila Grih Udyog - makers of the iconic popadom brand, Lijjat Papad. You might say that this is nothing noteworthy. After all no Indian kitchen would be complete without a tiny plastic bottle containing what is perhaps the most pungent powder conceivable. In South India perhaps the most popular brand is LG - not the Korean conglomerate but a staid company started by Laljee Goshoo in Mumbai. You just cannot make Sambaar curry, or Rasam, or Dal, without a pinch of asafoetida.

A popular Indian brand

The interesting point is that all the asafoetida sold and consumed in India is imported! Lijjat Papad uses Hing (asafoetida) imported from Afghanistan. Other companies like LG import the product in raw form, mix it with gum arabic, and rice-powder / maida and sell it as "compounded asafoetida" which contains less than 50 percent of the actual stuff. Even in this adulterated form it is an expensive spice - 50g packet sells for INR 75 which comes to about INR 1500 (USD 22) for a kilogram.

Another curious thing is that asafoetida is not officially considered a "spice". For some reason it does not even figure on the Indian Spice Board's list of spices imported into India. The Ministry of Commerce lists it under the category "resins and gums" (ExIm HS code 1301-9013). Most of the asafoetida in the Indian market is imported from Afghanistan and Iran. There are two main varieties of asafoetida ie. Hing Kabuli Sufaid (Milky white asafoetida) and Hing Lal (Red asafoetida). Tajikistan too is now emerging as an important supplier of quality asafoetida.

The earliest know reference to asafoetida comes from an ancient Sumeran medical recipe dating back to 2100 BCE. So it hardly surprising that this resin figures prominently in the Ayurveda treatise - Charaka Samhita - compiled in circa 300 BCE.  According to this source, the Bhagavata Purana compiled in the 10the century, notes that the Hing plant grows in the abode of Shiva. Considering that the plant grows in cold mountainous regions of Iran and the Western Himalayas, it is surprising how a steady supply of this resin has been reaching all corners of India over the past three millennia..

Asafoetida is extracted from the Ferula plants (esp. Ferula asfoetida) which have large taproots, 12.5-15 cm in diameter at the crown when they are 4-5 years old. Just before the plants flower, in March-April, the upper part of the living rhizome root is laid bare and the stem cut off close to the crown. The white sap that extrudes from the exposed stem-base is then collected, dried and sold to traders. The plant grows only in arid, cold areas and efforts to cultivate them in Himachal, Ladakh and Kashmir are yet to succeed.

Farmers in these states would certainly be pleased to see the efforts succeed. After all, there are only a few plants that grow with little care and yield such high prices in the market.

Exports from Afghanistan

For some reason, the FAO-UN does not list asafoetida as a noteworthy export from Afghanistan, but independent research suggests that this is indeed a significant export item from Afghanistan. In 2014-15, the country exported red asafoetida worth USD 21,940,223 (312.281 tons) and white asafoetida worth USD 12,259,302 (218 tons).

Is USD 33 million worth of exports insignificant? Certainly not if you consider the fact that the top export item from Afghanistan is raisins (red, black, big, abjosh) and its total value is just a bit more at ~ USD 36 million. Other famous dry-fruit or spice exports - Almonds and Cumin is worth just USD 26 million and USD 1.6 million respectively!

So why is it that asafoetida fails to get mentioned in the trade charts?

I don't know. Yet.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

> https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/amazing-lijjat-papad-story-rs-80-rs-800-crore-130350826.html
> WIPO article - https://www.wipo.int/ipadvantage/en/details.jsp?id=3619
> Lijjat Papad -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat_Papad
> https://www.thedollarbusiness.com/magazine/from-afghanistan-with-love/46065
. India imports 25% of the world's asafoetida
> http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Feru_ass.html
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3459456/
> https://www.indianetzone.com/1/asafoetida.htm
> Plants mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana (600-1000AD) -  https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/118519/21/21_glossary%20of%20plants%20found%20in%20the%20text.pdf
> Afghanistan - Commodity Exports - http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#rankings/commodities_by_country_exports
- Hing does not figure in the top-5 exports by value -- the only spice that figures here is "Anise, radian, fennel, coriander" -- USD 26million (2016)
- Top export item by value was Raisins - 19T for USD 56million
> Spices Board -  http://www.indianspices.com/sites/default/files/Major%20Item%20wise%20Import-2016.pdf
> Import Policy - ExIm HS code 1301 90 13 --  http://dgftcom.nic.in/exim/2000/itchs2017/chap13.pdf
> Afghanistan Exports - https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/afg/
> (2015) Paper - India-Afghanistan - Overview of Economic Relations - http://www.renupublishers.com/images/article/1461872860AEV2N2d.pdf

* Oldest Medical Document - Sumeria 2100 BCE - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC200079/pdf/mlab00211-0009.pdf
* Shah NC and Amir Zare (2014): Asafoetida (Heeng): The Well Known Medicinal Condiment of India & Iran -  http://www.thescitech.com/admin/includes/abstractpdf/2014-10-0453469a75d73f8.pdf

Chalo Khajuraho!

Travelling means different things to different people. To me, one of the most interesting things about travelling is the clash between expectations and ground realities.

Long before you arrive your destination you have a picture in your mind, an image built out of words and views of folks who have been there before. In the new world of digital media the gap between expectation and reality is bridged the moment you scan through some Google searches, a few YouTube videos and articles. In most journeys you re-live the experiences of others.

Not so for Khajuraho.

Nothing prepared me for the scope and scale of artistry, human ingenuity and effort that has gone into the Khajuraho temples. I had expected to see a small town built around a couple of temples, its walls packed with erotic sculptures, a backdrop for an annual dance festival where classical dancers perform for the tourists. What I found instead was an orderly municipality built on the site of an ancient, abandoned city packed with scores of temples of astounding beauty, set in a landscape that was just as bleak and arid, a mere shadow of what it must have been a thousand years ago.

The temples are proof that an oasis of prosperity existed amidst the badlands of Bundelkhand long before it came to be known by that name. It was a city without walls, protected by the swift waters of the Karnavati river, enriched by the precious gems extracted from the Panna Mines and ruled by a dynasty that controlled the lucrative trade routes between the northern Gangetic plains and southern India.

At Khajuraho you enter time-space warp. The Karnavati river is now called Ken - an anglicised abbreviated version of a river that is a dribble of what it used to be. You look at the scorched, barren, red soil and wonder how it could have been thickly forested once, or the rich agricultural land that fed the healthy, rugged warriors and lovers that adorn the walls of all the temples here.

The site was also significant in Hindu cosmology. Just as in the case of holy city of Varanasi, here too a major river  flows northwards, towards the sacred Himalayas before it turned again towards the seas. For some reason this was also a centre for yogic austerities, a hub for Jain monks, tantric Shaivite worshipers, as well as a range of unusual deities such as Brahma, Varaha (the boar avatar of Vishnu), and Vamana (another avatar of a pudgy, dwarf mendicant).

Folklore has it that the area around Khajuraho, which was known in ancient times as Jejahoti, was home to 85 temples and 85 lakes. Only 25 temples remain now. As for the lakes, they are now mere ponds filled with murky green water and a few buffalos. Historical records indicate that the city and its temples were abandoned after the Chandela Kingdom with its capital at Kalinjar Fort 85km away, was raided by Mahmud of Ghazni  in 1022 CE. As was the norm, the survivers may have been enslaved and taken away by other invaders , including Qutub-ud-din-Aibak who defeated the Chandelas again, two centuries later.



The abandoned temples then drifted into oblivion and got covered by forests that protected it from the zeal of later invaders until they were 'rediscovered' by an Englishman travelling from Sagar to Calcutta.

Since this 'rediscovery' almost all the temples of Khajuraho have been under government control. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) now restores and maintains most of these abandoned temples within manicured lawns and and fenced compounds. Only two sets of temples falls outside this control - the set of Eastern Jain Temples and one temple dedicated to Matangeshwara (Shiva) just outside the fenced perimeter of the Western Group of Temples.

ASI does a fine job of preserving these heritage monuments. Each temple has been assigned a care-taker, each of whom ensures that visitors do not deface or vandalise the sculptures. We were particularly impressed with three young men - Anurag Pathak at the Chaturbhuj temple, Saurav Singh Rajput at the Vamana temple and Parasuram at the Vishvanath temple - each of them took care to ensure that the temples were safe.



While inside the Vishwanath temple a large group of village women could be heard singing songs and going from one temple to the other. In their own sing-song way they walked into the sanctum of each temple and paid their respects to the gods that once occupied them. According to the caretaker, Parasuram, many of the pilgrims who throng the Mantangeshwar temple also drop by into the fenced, ticketed ASI complex to reaffirm their ancient ties to these great temples.

Researchers have tracked available records to recreate the sequence of temple building in Khajuraho. It follows an intriguing pattern. The earliest temples built in Khajuraho were the Brahma shrine next to the lake and the Chausath (64) Yogini temple. Both are bare and austere, made out of rough hewn granite. The Matangeshwar temple came up next around 900 CE. This active temple has such a large Shiva Linga that you barely have any space to move inside.

The Laxmana temple was perhaps the first 'grand' temple built in generous proportions with a large Varaha (boar) shrine facing it. On the same line, the Vishwanath temple was built next, paired with a Nandi shrine. Among the large temples here, the Kandaria Mahadev which came up next is considered the acme of Chandela temple architecture. From here on all the temple building went downhill, both in scale and exuberance.

Prudes and others who are embarrassed about the erotic sculptures here will tell you that only 10 percent of carvings here are 'gross'. Don't believe them. Fact is that uninhibited display of sex is exactly what the temple builders wanted to highlight. At all the three major temples (Laxman, Vishwanath, Kandaria Mahadev) the northern and southern walls are packed with 3+ feet high sculptures of uninhibited lovemaking. These are like large banner headlines that turn all the remaining sculptures into footnotes.



Amazingly, while all the Hindu shrines reserve lovemaking scenes for the outer walls, within the Jain shrines it seems to be the opposite. Here you have tangled couples on the doorway to the sanctum showing the great "Digambara" (sky-clad) Jaina saints in all their naked glory!

At the end of the day one simple fact stands out. We know very, very little about our own people who built these amazing temples. We see them through a prism coloured by the Abrahamic armies that conquered us and colonised our minds for a thousand years.

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Looking Around

Since the main set of temples - the Western Group - was walking distance from our hotel we decided to use a taxi to visit the temples that were away from the town.  First we visited the Chausath Yogini Temple, then the Eastern Group of Temples (Jain Complex - Adinath, Parasvnath, and Shanti Nath), the Southern Group of Temples (Duladeo, Chaturbhuj and Bijamandala), then back to the eastern zone to visit the temples that our driver 'forgot' to mention - the ones around the lake - Brahma, Hanuman, Javari and Vamana. The rest of the time was dedicated to the main Western Group of Temples (Laxmana, Kandariya Mahadev, Jagadamba, Chitragupta and Vishvanath).

Accommodation

Travelling during the off-season has its perks. We stayed at the Lalit hotel which was so short of guests that it upgraded our booking to a suite which turned out to be as big as an apartment - two bedrooms with attached bath, a large hall with an attached kitchen, bright French windows opening into the lawns and overlooking bright bougainvillea bushes overhanging the walls!

The location is excellent - just 750m from the Western Temples, and right next to the ASI museum, the Festival Grounds, eateries and short walk from the Tribal Museum which is worth visiting.

Travel Tips

• Travel during the off-season (April - September). Apart from being spared the crowds you get better deals at the hotels, restaurants and with the taxi-wallah.
• Use the Indian Railways. The Sampark Kranti Express is perfectly timed for weekend getaways from Delhi.
• Cameras: For some strange reason, ASI does not allow tripods into the temple complex. You need to have a letter granting permission from their office in New Delhi / Bhopal (!)
• Don't expect much from the Archaeological Museum in Khajuraho. Despite having a sprawling complex ASI displays are poorly labelled, manned only by security guards who just keep intoning the rules ("no selfies with the displays"...)
• Guide - Satendra Kumar Dwivedi (Sachin) - Mobile: +91 9753 954 343 - Email: dsachine@rediffmail.com
• Driver - Lakhan Singh, Old village ward no.14, Near Jawari Temple - Mobile: +91 7223 053 448, 7049 844 467

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Questions:
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* The Chandela - Chola Connection: The Chandela dynaty ruled Bundelhand from ~900 to 1100 CE while the Chola's of South India were also at their peak during the same period. Rajaraja-I (985-1016 CE) and his son Rajendra-I (1012-44 CE) stretched the boundaries of their kingdom not only across the seas to South East Asia but also northwards, all the way into the Gangetic plains. In fact Rajendra-I also earned the sobriquet "Gangaikondachola".
Rajendra-I could not have reached the Ganga river without crossing Bundelkhand. Was there a link between the massive stone temples erected by the Cholas and the ones built by the Chandela's in Khajuraho?

Velu Pillai's Mesopotamia

Me-so-po-ta-mia. A country that almost sounded like the notes of a song. It had a certain ring to it.

As a schoolboy from Hyderabad visiting his grandparents in Kerala during the summer holidays, one got to hear about a number of countries. Across the paddy fields there lived a grand-aunt who had spent much of her life in Malaysia. Many in the neighbourhood were working in the Gulf states - Saudi, Dubai, or Oman. Our chavadi - the airiest hall in the ancestral home -  had large almirah's stuffed with musty, moth-eaten National Geographic's and Readers Digest's from USA, and old textbooks published in Great Britain.

In the western room (Kizhakke-muri) an old, sepia tinted photo adorned one of the walls. It was of a bespectacled man in uniform with a medal pinned to his chest. "That is your valiya-appoopan (great-grandfather)", I was told, "He served the British Indian Army in Mesopotamia during the first World War".

Mesopotamia. In my imagination a country with such a name had to be a grand place. Yet there were no books from Mesopotamia. The country no longer existed in the school atlas either - it was now called Iraq.

I learnt later that the man in the sepia print was my grandmother's father, Velu Pillai. Details of his life were sketchy. He had served in the Army Postal Corps. My grandmother was four years old when her parents left her with relatives in Kerala and went to Mesopotamia. They had returned to India in 1927 with an infant who was born in Baghdad. This little boy would grow up to fight the next World War, serve in the swampy airfields of Burma and retire as a Wing Commander in independent India.

I had always wondered about the life and times of Velu Pillai. How did he travel with his young wife, Karthiyayani Amma across the Arabian Sea to that ancient land between two great rivers? What did he think of the people from other foreign lands to fight somebody else's war. Did he see himself as a cat's paw?

Last week I came across a book that gave me a glimpse of India's role in the First World War: George Morton-Jack's "THE INDIAN EMPIRE AT WAR - from Jihad to Victory - the Untold Story of the Indian Army in the First World War".

The big picture turned out to be quite dismal. Countless Indians had suffered for the white man's greed, his squabble for colonies across the world. 1.5 million Indian servicemen had served in the war - a number equivalent of the empire's military forces from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, South Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore put together -- a sixth of all the empire's servicemen. No less than 34,000 of them died in some of the most brutal battles of the western front, Gallipoli, East Africa, Iraq and Palestine.

Velu Pillai would have been a part of the Indian Expeditionary Force D which faced the Ottomans in Mesopotamia. They had seized Basra in Nov-1914 and started pushing up the Euphrates and Tigris where they had  repulsed attack by 7000 Turks in Apr-1915 leaving 3000 of them dead in Shu'ayba, some 15 miles west of Basra.

Then the tables had turned. Pushed hard by an ambitious, and stingy, governor-general of India who wanted to retire as the 'Pasha of Baghdad', Force D found itself short of food and ammunition at Kut, by the banks of the Tigris. The besieged 6th Indian Division at Kut dug 30 miles of trenches, suffered 2200 casualties in keeping the Turks out, until they surrendered on 29 April 1916.

Whatever remained of Force D's 6th Division - 10,500 Indian and 2600 British prisoners-of-war - were then sent on a 600-mile death march from Kut through the Iraqi desert, to labour camps in Ottoman Syria outside Aleppo and in the nearby Amanus and Taurus mountain ranges. Only a few had survived the ordeal.

Revenge and retribution came a year later. From mid-December 1916 to March 1917, a completely revamped Force D was let loose by London to avenge the fall of Kut and to steamroll the Turkish Army for 200 miles up the Tigris to Baghdad. Another year of fighting in Europe and the war was over, on terms that were so humiliating for the vanquished that it took another horrific war 26 years later before things settled down.

What happened to the million Indians who returned home after the war? What we do know for certain is that the British continued to play one ethnic group against another most of whom remained loyal foot-soldiers for the British colonial apparatus:

• In 1919, men of the 54th Sikh, 59th Scinde Rifles and 9th Gurkhas carried out the massacre at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April. 1650 bullets were fired in 10 minutes to kill some 500 Punjabis and wound 1200 more...some of the casualties were their own colleagues - Indian Army veterans, Sikhs and Hindu Jats who had themselves served the British Indian Army in France and Iraq.
• India's Commander-in-Chief Charles Monro massed 340,000 men on the Indo-Afghan border for the Third Afghan War, initiated as a jihad by the new Emir Amanullah following the assassination of this father Habibullah, and ending in his swift defeat.
• In 1921-22 seven Indian battalions with artillery and armoured cars 'suppressed' the rural Moplah Rebellion by Muslim villagers armed with swords; they killed 2400 Moplahs and wounded 1650.

What did Velu Pillai think of all this? How did his experiences change him after he returned home, to serve the maharaja of Travancore as a Dy.Tehsildar? Unfortunately none of his notes or letters survived in the damp and humidity of the chavadi with fungus and termites for company.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* The book - https://www.amazon.in/Indian-Empire-At-War-Victory/dp/1408707705

* Kipling's poem "Mesopotamia" - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57430/mesopotamia-56d23af3008a7

* Word War I Records - https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/

* Etymology - Mesopotamia - "Land between rivers" - aka Do-ab!

Pralayam - Kerala after the Deluge

Houseboats waiting to go at 11:30AM

Last year the monsoons were disastrous for Kerala. For the first time since 1924 the state saw all its rivers in spate, most of its agricultural land submerged and thousands huddled in relief camps across the state. 

There had been talk of how it would take years to rebuild and recover from the "Pralayam" - not a mere flooding ("vellapokkam") but a calamity of epic proportions for which a more potent word had been drawn from Sanskrit epics.

Seven months after the floods there is little trace of the disaster that killed over 400 people, displaced 5 million and caused economic losses of over USD 5 billion.

At Kainakary the houseboat business is booming again. These boats are usually allowed into the backwaters only after 11:30 when the fishermen have returned with their catch. Only the larger, double-deck boats have to wait longer because the quays could not be dredged last year due to a funds crunch. The locals are upbeat - this year there has been no shortage of tourists either at the Ayurvedic spas that line the Vembanad lagoon, or the toddy shops or ice-cream vendors on boats.

Not far from the banks of the Pamba river at Othera, recovery is said to have taken place within weeks of the water receding. In the words of a resident relative, "Our house, along with about 200 others, was an island for 10 days. No electricity, no tele-connectivity, or access to supply of clean water. Helicopters hovered around dropping provisions which were piled up at local shrines...and often distributed amongst those who were less than deserving."

I had expected many of the houses to be in bad shape. While on a morning walk along some of the worst affected areas, from Othera to the railway bridge over the Pamba I came across only one houses that had not been repaired. Interestingly, the low-lying areas that had been home to the erstwhile low caste agricultural labourers is now populated by groups of migrant labourers from Bihar, Bengal, Odisha and Assam. Tiny old houses along Parayanthodukuzhi with its fallow paddies and broken boundary walls is now alive with the costumes and languages of the Gangetic plains.

An irrigation project too is underway to bring 33,000 KL of Pamba water, pumped across the undulating terrain, through canals and aqueducts to the fields of Pathanamthitta district.

Will the politics of flood relief have an impact on the ongoing Lok Sabha elections? Quite unlikely say the locals. 

However, one thing is for sure - it is a great time to be in the hardware and paints and waterproofing business in Kerala! 

Toddy Shop at Kainakary duly endorsed by an aspiring MP

Preparing the paddies at Kuttanad

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* https://www.livemint.com/Politics/q7EcgaHsrardvtcNNYGYRN/Kerala-Floods-2018-2-months-later-a-tentative-recovery.html

* http://www.forbesindia.com/blog/infrastructure/rebuilding-life-in-kerala-after-the-floods/

Out of Africa - into Europe

This was an eye-opener, and a reminder about how little I know about Africa.

Having studied with a group of Africans I also find it surprising that even as a part of academic discussions at Tsukuba University on this very topic, there were no fiery discussions on the three key events mentioned by Dr. Arikana:

• Berlin conference of 1884-85 for amicable division of Africa into European colonies - a meeting of 14 colonial powers for drawing of arbitrary boundaries, creation of countries that exist today.
• The French government arm twisting its colonies to sign, during 1958-61,  a pact for the Continuation of Colonisation - "The Colonial Debt" 
• 1963 - Addis Ababa conference that lead to the creation of Organisation of African Unity (OAU) by just seven states - Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Some of the numbers presented are truly cringe-worthy. As a repayment for "civilising" the Africans, for teaching them how to 'eat with fork and spoon', 14 French colonies were were required to deposit 80% (now down to 60%) of their bank reserves with the French Ministry of Finance. This self-serving arrangement enables France to extract no less than USD 500 billion from these 14 countries every year!

Since these 'Francophone' depended almost entirely on their former colonial master for marketing their minerals (first right of refusal), their military hardware, for their printed currencies, and for the education of their elite, the dependencies are almost hardwired. Countries that try to come out of the Colonial Debt are rewarded with coups (no less than 60 so far), assassinations and 'engineered chaos'.

On the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwalla Massacre, it does seem like a miracle that we Indians managed to get independence with just the partition of the subcontinent!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jecmaus/blog/300114/franceafrique-14-african-countries-forced-france-pay-colonial-tax-benefits-slavery-and-colonization
* The French African Connection - https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2013/08/201387113131914906.html
* The Berlin Conference of 1884 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference

Cactus Combos

A yellow blob of thorny fractals?

This eye-catching cactus caught my attention at an IFFCO Kisan outlet selling indoor plants. It sat on a shelf with other succulents but combination seemed rather unusual. The lower green part looked as though it had been shorn of its thorns while the bright yellow or pink portion did not look as though it had emerged from a flower.

Sure enough it turns out that this is grafted combo of two different species of cactus - the yellow portion belongs to  Gymnocalycium mihanovichii while the lower, green one belongs Hylocerus, a family better known for producing edible pitayas, aka "Dragon-fruit".

The interesting bit is that Gymnocalycium completely lacks chlorophyll. It was originally found in Paraguay growing under bushes with little exposure to sunlight. Somewhere along along the way it got to grafted to other cactus species that does have chlorophyll creating a novel variety which is now being marketed as 'Moon Cactus'!

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LINKS:

IFFCO Kisan Urban Garden - https://www.ikug.in/indoor-plants

https://worldofsucculents.com/what-are-grafted-cacti/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylocereus

http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/CACTI/Family/Cactaceae/11929/Gymnocalycium_mihanovichii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bvZrCDJSh4

Ribosomes - Making Sense of Blobology

This is not a book I would ever pick on an impulse. The cover itself  is quite intimidating - a confusing, colorful blob of tangled ribbons. On first glance it looks like a tome for the lab nerds, for those seeped in structural biology, the followers of specialized science journals, and certainly not the general reader.

I picked this book only because on the dark cover, I noticed blurps from three writers I admire - Siddharth Mukherjee, Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson. The stock comment ' I could not put this book down' from one of them pointed towards the possibility the book could be read - and understood - by folks like me, those who are not specialists but merely curious.

I was not at all disappointed.  The author,Venki Ramakrishnan is the 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and his book, "Gene Machine" is a personal story of a physicist turned biologist who helped decipher the secrets of the Ribosome.  Even if the topic sounds esoteric, the book is a down-to-earth narrative of a boy from Baroda who made it big.

Yet it is not the typical story of a south Indian vegetarian in USA. You get the impression of a adventurous, outgoing guy riding a series of lucky breaks. Perhaps the first of these came through a HoD at Baroda-U who got a letter from Ohio University seeking prospective students. Nineteen year old Venki is then offered a graduate scholarship without the usual GRE scores. He lands up in the America in the midst of the anti-war protests of 1971, and immediately after graduation, gets married to Vera Rosenberry, a talented illustrator of children's books, and a single mother.

In the initial chapters, Venki has a nice way of explaining his work with analogies. In the late 70s everybody knew that the ribosomes were responsible for protein synthesis, but nobody knew how -

"Imagine you are a Martian peering at the earth from above. You observe tiny objects on the surface that move mainly in straight lines, ocassionally turning at right angles...you could tell tht they consume hydrocarbons and emit carbon dioxide along with some pollutants and some heat. But you have absolutely no idea what these objects are, let alone how they work. Only by knowing the detailed construction of the object would you be able to see that it is made of hundreds of components that work together and that it has an engine connected to a crankshaft that make the wheels turn..."

Venki's search takes him from the university to his first job with the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee and then to Brookhaven on the East Coast. Along the way, X-ray crystallography becomes the main tool for deciphering the structure of the various complicated components of the ribosome at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, UK.

The book also helps you catch a glimpse into the petty politics of those engaged in cutting edge science, of the walled garden that is open only to those from 'elite' institutions, and the manner in which the race for a Nobel Prize brings out the worst in many scientists.

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LINKS

Good Reads - Gene Machine - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088590-gene-machine

Crumbs

This is an old print advertisement from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). On the bottom corner of this haunting image of people reacing out to the last crumbs on the plate, the fine print simply says, "A little from you can mean a lot. Make a contribution."

I do not know if people actually noticed the illustrations on the rim of this plate, or if the message got them to make a contribution, but I was reminded of this last sunday.

One of our neighbors had set up a shamiana to celebrate Basant Panchami and Saraswati Puja, a festival that marks the arrival of spring. As is the norm, a community kitchen was set up and hot food (puri's, kichri, curries and chutney) was being served as "prasaad", a holy offering.

I had just finished eating the food on my plate when I noticed a Jain neighbor sitting next to me. He was carefully picking out each an every crumb from his plate, leaving it absolutely clean.

Feeling a bit ashamed I started cleaning up my plate too, and asked him what prompted him to eat so carefully. He laughed at the very idea that I found it unusual and said, "According to Jain tradition, wastage of food is considered one of the worst sins...so for us, the first rule is to take only the quantity of food we really need, and then to remember that the holiest prasaad is the last sprinking of water used to clean-up our used plates...even the water used to clean a plate is not be wasted"!

Now that is something to think about...which are the other cultural habits or religious traditions that encourage people from wasting food?

A little from each of us can certainly mean a lot.

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LINKS

Why to Jains have strict food habits? -- http://www.jainism.com/blog/why-do-jains-have-strict-food-habits

Jainism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Prime Lens - Back to Basics

A kit lens makes you lazy. This is the first thing you learn when you step out of your comfort zone in photography.

I have been photographing with an 18-105mm lens for more than 10 years now and thanks to the convenience of zooming in and out, I had all but forgotten the basics of photography. I knew I needed to get back to the basics, to detox, to relearn, and a fixed-focus 'prime lens' seemed the best way forward.

The ones I could afford were shortlisted to the Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lenses which came in two types 'D' and 'G'.  The 'D' was a older version without an inbuilt focusing motor, and it came for less than half the price of the 'G'. Since I was using a camera body that already had a motor the former seemed better value for money - especially when it came at an an extra discount during the recent Amazon Sale.

So last month, I set aside my kit lens for the first time, and twisted into its place a brand new 50mm 1.8D. The Nikon D90 now felt like a strange new animal - lighter, faster and sharper than ever before, and yet completely unfamiliar. Despite clocking nearly 50,000 'shutter actuations' on the D90, I realised that  knew very little about the nuts and bolts, the basics of photography: focal lengths, F-stops and apertures.

They say the 50mm lens shows you the world the way your eyes see it, by "rendering images that closely match the true perspective of the human eye". Sounds nice... but when you look through the 50mm lens for the first time you feel like a horse with blinkers plodding through a tunnel. The world shrinks. Instead of just zooming you now need to use your feet and composition becomes a bit of a struggle.

The 50mm lens is also a bit puzzling with all its numbers and dials packed into a tiny ring. So here is a collection of links that has helped me re-learn photography -

• Sudhir Shivaram tutorial - https://youtu.be/WXdAX0No2hM
• Mark Levoy - Lectures on Digital Photography - https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/home
• Steele Training - DSLR focus tips - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4bQc36r5ek&feature=youtu.be
• Why wide-angle lens should not be used for portraits - https://www.diyphotography.net/gif-explains-changing-focal-length-impacts-portrait/

• Exposure Triangle - cheatsheet - https://www.hamburger-fotospots.de/kostenloser-download-foto-cheatcard-fuer-fotografen.html

Understanding Exposure and F-Stops:

• Expert Photography - https://expertphotography.com/understanding-fstops-stops-in-photography-exposure/
• Dylan Bennett (2012)- A Simple Explanation of F-Stop - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNIouLByJQ

And just in case you too are weighing the pros and cons of a prime lens, these might help -

• Comparisons - The Nikon Guy -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU9YfNgoBLU
• https://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-50mm-f1-8g
• https://improvephotography.com/34639/nikon-50mm-1-8d-vs-1-8g/
• https://versus.com/en/nikon-af-nikkor-50mm-f-1-8d-vs-nikon-af-s-nikkor-50mm-f-1-8g

Black Sheep and Deccan History

I love the way history is being re-examined and re-written by a new band of writers. Until a few years ago I only knew of William Darlymple as a somebody who could tranform meticulous research into narratives that appealed to a wider audience. I often wished we had Indians writers who could go beyond the colonial period and breathe some life into it.

In this context I was glad to see Sanjeev Sanyal's "Land of Seven Rivers", and Manu Pillai's "Ivory Throne".

My first book this year was the much acclaimed second book by Manu Pillai -  "Rebel Sultans". This one chronicles the deep linkages South India once had with what is now called the Middle East - especially Iran, Iraq and Arabia.

Despite the fact that I grew up in Hyderabad, I knew practically nothing about Deccan history. I was aware of a few names and places,  of the fabulous collections at the Salar Jung Museum, vaguely remembered visiting the Golkonda Fort a couple of times, and often noticed the Falaknuma Palace from the school playgrounds.  But until I read this book I never knew that Nizams who built all this -  the Quli dynasty -  traced its origins to a family that once ruled the Levant - the House of Black Sheep, also known as the Black Sheep Turkmans.

Who were the Black Sheep Turkmans?  It was aparently a title - "Kara Koyunlu" - of a monarchy that ruled over vast areas of present-day Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1394 to 1498. After more than a century of rule this ruling family was ousted by a rival clan known as the House of the White Sheep. Ousting a royal family in the Middle Ages usually meant only two things - death or blinding of all the male heirs. A young boy from the House of Black Sheep ran away to India to escape this fate. He first enlisted as a mercenary in the Deccan Bahmani Sultanate, and then went on to set up his own feifdom at Golkonda in present-day Hyderabad.

The "Rebel Sultans" is also a window into the colorful history of the rest of the Deccan. It tells you how Aurangabad was originally the city of Khirki by an Ethiopian-born military leader named Malik Ambar. It tells you that contrary to popular narratives, the Battle of Talikota was not a war between a Hindu kingdom and a coalition of perfidious Muslim warlords. The kingdom of Vijayanagara which was utterly destroyed after this war had its own share of double-dealings, political miscalculations and hubris.

The book also has many tantalising threads that need to be knitted together. It leaves me with a wish to know more about Timur the Lame, the Turkman raider who later inspired his clansman Babur, to raid India for its riches after having been beaten out of Samarkand. I want to know more about the Kakathiyas who were perhaps the most egalitarian rulers in medieval India, and I need to  have a better understanding of philosophy and preachings of Eknath, who, like Kabir, bridged differences across castes and religions.

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LINKS

- Amazon - "Rebel Sultans"

Raqqa

I just finished watching "City of Ghosts", a film about RBSS - a group titled "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" - that has been resisting the occupation of the Syrian city by the the Islamic State.

Unlike Hollywood war movies, this is not about something that happened in the distant past, coloured in shades of American bravado and machismo. It is the here and now of the situation in Syria. It is the story of how ordinary citizens of Raqqa, a city in Syria rose up in revolt in 2013 against Assad, a leader who they considered a tyrant for 40 years, until the radical Islamic State swiftly came in to fill the power vacuum.

The narrative follows a small group of nervous war refugees - teachers, journalists, students - fleeing from IS and the Syrian government. Seeing the rest of the world disconnected with the harsh reality back home they decide to set up a social network - a website, FaceBook page, Twitter -  to send updates from friends back home on the way in which ISIS was enforcing its vision of the Islamic Caliphate in Raqqa. Summary executions, beheadings, mutilation and rape, all in the name of Allah.

Once the counter-narrative begins to bite, ISIS responds to RBSS by hunting down nd executing its citizen correspondents in Syria, and by trying to assassinate it leaders in Turkey and Germany.

In 2017 the Assad Government finally managed to crush IS in Raqqa after a prolonged battle that reduced much of the city into rubble.

It has no been an entirely happy liberation. RBSS now has to contend with the "old" tyrant whom its founders perhaps opposed in the first place. So it now keep track of the shortcomings of the reconstruction effort, of insufficient funds coming in for rebuilding a city and of disease outbreaks in refugee camps. The devil may be gone but the deep blue sea remains.

This is the sort of film that makes your wonder about the Middle East and the so called "Arab Spring".

Was it really worthwhile to oppose the Assad regime that provided relative security and prosperity to a country for four decades? Has anything been achieved by the countries that encouraged "democratic movements"?  Or has it merely filled their own homes with unwanted refugees from countries they wanted to democratize?

At the Mazar

At first glance, Mazar may not seem like much of a city. From the far distance it looks like a a dusty patch of low buildings set in a large desert plain bordering snow-peaked  mountains. It does not have the teeming crowds of Kabul or the towering pines of Herat, or for that matter any tree-cover worth mentioning.

Yet, to me it turned out to be a city of superlatives: it had the largest and neatest airport  had seen in Afghanistan; the widest roads, tastiest breads, the most amazing array of carpets sold by the sharpest traders, and the loveliest Sufi shrine I have ever seen.

Just as the Italian military has a strong presence in Herat, it is the ISAF German forces that dominate this area. A large base sits right next to the airport with its helicopters hovering in and out, but unlike in Kabul the show of force and dominance is not in your face; it is subtle and understated. Once you step out the airport there are long straight roads lined with numerous gas-stations. 

Apparently this part of northern Afghanistan has been a source of oil and natural gas. Until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, natural gas produced from the Sheberghan gas fields was exported to the Soviet Union, but also supported the operations of a fertilizer plant, a power station and a textile mill in Mazar-e-Sharif. Remnants of a Russian pipeline can still be seen in the outskirts of the city, along with remains of war munitions - rusted, hollow tanks, APCs and MiG aircraft chassis.

The Mazar of today seems like a flat expanse of mud-walled buildings and wide roads that radiate out from the grand mausoleum that gives this city its name - the Tomb of the Prince, the Shrine of Ali or the Blue Mosque.

It is a lovely, sprawling complex that gives you an immense sense of space. You step off the crowded streets into a garden complex that leads you through large gates, into a vast expanse of marble tiled courtyard.  

Looking around the bustling market that surrounds the Mazar it is difficult to imagine how, until just a few years ago, this city had been witness to brutal cycles of violence. Today there is a sense of foreboding that the Taliban may sweep in to fill in the power vacuum, once again.

For now you can walk around the cold marble floors of the Blue Mosque, walk around the sanctum filled with incense, and pray that this bustling city with it cheerful people is not sucked into yet another round of senseless violence.

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LINKS:

* Gas Pipeline (2013) - http://mom.gov.af/en/news/20123
* A brief history of natural gas in Afghanistan - http://mom.gov.af/en/page/4750
* Mazar-e-Sharif International Airport - http://www.germancooperation-afghanistan.de/sites/default/files/2017-Airport-EN.pdf

Herat - City of Spires and Pines

Ancient cities have a life of their own. We read stories about them and build a certain picture in our imagination. Ground realities however turn out to be something else.

Herat is no different. To a visitor coming from Kabul it gives you a glimpse of what cities in Afghanistan could be. Relaxed, dignified, and aware of its own stature and place in history at the crossroads of civilizations.

This was once a city of fire-worshipping Zoroastrians, an area famous for its great wines until the Arabs took over after 650AD. Here ruled the Macedonians led by Alexander, the Turks, Chinese, Mongols and, of course, the Persians. It was also one of the few cities of the Islamic world to be ruled for an extended period by a woman- Queen Gawhershad - remembered today as the builder of the grand towers of the Musalla Complex.

In present day Herat, the first thing that struck me is the pine trees. Almost all the roads are lined with towering old pines. Having seen these trees only above the "pine-line" in the Himlayas, I always thought they needed steep slopes to grow big and strong, so it was bit surprising to see them all lined up in a city that was as flat as a chappati. 

Unlike Kabul which is sectioned by 2000m high 'hills', and urban settlements that have grown along a meandering river, Herat has a clear grid-like layout. A straight road brings you from the airport, right into the city centre. The security footprint here is more subtle - fewer warplanes in the airport, hardly any buildings barricaded  with T-walls and barbed wire. There are no military blimps watching you from the skies or  helicopters constantly buzzing overhead, rattling the window-panes.

The streets and markets are bustling with men and women. Fruits seem larger, jucier and more colorful; the saboos naan a lot tastier; streets are less cluttered and far less dustier, the air crisp and clean. Children crowd around street vendors; strange looking, colorful three-wheelers fashioned out of motorcycles trundle on the streets, looking as though they are going to take off any minute into the skies.

And yet you are constantly reminded that this city is not peaceful as it looks. Violence and robbery on the streets is not rare. A colleague was recently coming out of a restaurant, chatting on his mobile when a car stopped in front of him. He thought the driver needed directions, until he saw a pistol aimed at his head. Within seconds, his mobile was snatched, his purse taken out of his pocket and car was gone.

Things may not be what they seem, but I would like to think that the people of Herat hold one of the keys to peace and prosperity in this war-torn country.

The Hindukush

"When we were children we used to play here and drink water straight from the river - it was so clean!"

The best years of Kabul are often described in past-tense. People talk of the glory days of the kings, of a city that was once a hub of trade and commerce across Asia, of dogged resistance to 'foreign invaders' who could never ever conquer Afghanistan..

The elderly in Kabul have happy memories of the city in the 1950s - those wonderful days when water was clean, when the country was peaceful and winters were what they ought to be - freezing cold. It is amazing to think that this country, proud its aversion to foreign invaders, was also the home of invaders who left an indelible mark on the history of Northern India.

Driven by the zeal of a new religion, Mahmud of Gazni was the first plunderer to make a career out of invading infidels in India. He systematically raided and plundered kingdoms in east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river, no less than seventeen times between CE 997 and 1030. After a brief pause of two centuries, another ruler emerged from Ghor, nested in the Hindukush mountains. The Ghurid empire led by Mu'izz al-Din was influential in creating the Delhi Sultanate.

Then came Timur-the-lame and his army as they crossed the Hindkush range, to launch the 1398 invasion of northern Indian subcontinent, plundering and killing all the way. Such was the number of slaves who were forced to cross the freezing cold of the Afghan mountains that Ibn Battutta refers to them as the "Killer of Hindus", or Hindukush.

Inspired by stories of Timur, one of his descendants, Zahir-ud-din Mohammed - aka Babur ('tiger') - decided to follow suit. As a young man of 21 years, he had taken control of Kabul in 1504. Having failed time and again to regain control over the Ferghana Valley, he turned his attention south-eastwards. In 1526, he made his move into north India, won the Battle of Panipat, ending the last Delhi Sultanate dynasty, and starting the era of the Mughals.

The slave trading operations continued during the Delhi Sultanate and through the Mughal era. It became a standard practicee to send thousands of slaves every year to Central Asia to pay for horses and other goods.

Looking at the condition of Afghanistan today you wonder... after all those centuries of plunder and flogging of slaves across the Hindukush: Where has all the loot gone? 

Afghanistan - An Election of Independents

Tomorrow is Election Day in Afghanistan. 

This is going to be the culmination of a long process of institution building in one of the most trying circumstances. It has a process that has also seen the creation of an independent election commission to oversee a process to bring in 249 representatives from 34 provinces to the Lower House of the Afghan Parliament.

Last week when I landed at Kabul the city presented a familiar, festive sight - colorful stickers, posters, placards and banners filled every possible public space. Posters carried unique logos and numbers, and it took me a while to realise that most of the prospective Members of Parliament were competing as independent candidates. 

According to a WaPo report, there are 2,565 candidates vying for 249 seats, including 417 women candidates. The IEC aims to set up more than 19,000 polling stations in 33 provinces. Out of Afghanistan's estimated total population of 30 million, 8.8 million people have registered to vote. Kabul city alone has more thans 800 candidates competing for 33 seats! 

An overview from AFP

Unlike in India, the system here is that of a single non-transferable vote valid in one constituency. Each voter casts just one vote for one candidate in a multi-candidate race. Posts are filled by the candidates with the most votes, and so in this case, candiates who get the maximum number of votes get to become MPs. 

Voters in cities like Kabul would be extra careful tomorrow - they would have to sift through a ballot 'paper' that looks more like a newspaper centrespread, and choose one candidate out of hundreds.

While most of the posters feature men in sharp suits or in traditional attire, it is interesting to note that there are a significant number of women candidates in the fray. This is not surprising given the fact that the Afghan constitution guarantees 68 seats - or 27% of the total - for women MPs, regardless of their vote share.

A lot of hopes and aspirations are hinged on this elections process, and everybody hopes that it passes off peacefully.



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LINKS & REFERENCES

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan- http://www.iec.org.af/

Report by Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-look-at-afghanistans-parliamentary-elections-on-saturday/2018/10/19/354e4b0c-d367-11e8-a4db-184311d27129_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ff58f1765639

BBC - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45836521

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-taliban-has-vowed-to-disrupt-the-afghan-elections-candidates-are-out-in-force-anyway/2018/10/16/d57bf1a4-ccf7-11e8-ad0a-0e01efba3cc1_story.html?utm_term=.9e059fd98606

Apostille of Fake Degrees

Last week I signed up for a UN assignment in Afghanistan. It was the culmination of a long drawn out selection process - online applications, verification of credentials and interviews. I need to be in Kabul for two months for the independent evaluation of an FAO project.

Having visited, worked and stayed in a few countries over the past 23 years, I thought I was familiar with the formalities involved in international travel. In this case, instructions from FAO were quite clear: "Approach Embassy with all relevant documents - Passport, photographs, degree certificate photocopy and original , signed contract document, MOFA reference number. Ticket is not necessary for visa".  

At the Afghan Embassy visa counter however, the officer flipped through my documents and asked me a question that left me quite stunned. "How do we know", she asked with genuine concern, "That your degree certificates are not fake?"

I tried telling her that, in the first place, I would not be selected by the UN for an assignment if I had fake degrees. I had two Master's degrees - the first from IRMA and the other from Tsukuba University, Japan. Both could easily be verified online on the official alumni pages. Also, I had got the second degree on a full scholarship from the World Bank - a fact that could be easily verified on a Google search since my entire Master's thesis was available online. 

The visa officer was unmoved. "Rules are rules", she insisted, "If your highest degree is from Japan, it has to be endorsed by the Japanese Embassy in India. All Indian degrees have to be verified by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)". She also added helpfully that applicants got it done at Patiala Courts where extra fees was charged for 'fast service'.

One of the lessons I had learnt is that there is no point arguing with with a Visa Officer. I walked out of the Afghan Embassy, crossed the road, and checked at the Embassy of Japan. They did not have any facility for "endorsing" certificates from Japanese universities. All they could do was to check with their registry and give me a letter saying that the university seal was genuine. This process would take at least three working days, and cost Rs. 2300. 

What next? I had no idea that MEA had anything to do with certification of education documents. Outside the Japanese Embassy, I set my files on a concrete blast-barrier and googled "India MEA education certificate endorsement". I got this page and learnt a new word: apostille.

It was a two-step procedure. First, the degree certificate had to be endorsed by a state government authority, and under Step-2 "MEA legalises the documents on the basis of the signature of the designated...authorities. Hence it does not take responsibility of the contents of the documents". MEA charged Rs.50 per document for this service. As expected, there was no mention of the time-frame involved.

Strapped for time, I now headed towards Patiala House Courts Complex, into the den of brokers, middlemen and lawyers dressed in 50 shades of black. In one of the many hole-in-the-wall offices, I presented by predicament to one of the broker-lawyers.  He feigned deep concern, quickly gauged my desperation level, and quoted his fees: Rs. 3000. 

So, for a government service worth Rs.50, I had to shell out Rs. 3000. Within this margin lies the thriving new economy of the apostilles. An education certificate from IRMA, an automomous education institution in Gujarat, is endorsed by a Sub-Divisional Magistrate in another state, Delhi, who proclaims it as genuine. Based on this, MEA legalises it 'without taking any responsibility of the contents of the documents'.

Come to think of it, this is a racket no different from that of the Public Notaries who blindly attest any document with a Government of India seal. The only difference is that you get a fancy sticker with a flurry of seals and signatures behind an education certificate.

Why would any Embassy encourage this kind of daylight robbery? Is this merely the game of passing-the-buck between bureaucrats of different countries?  A friend who has worked in Afghanistan for over a decade said this rule was introduced in 2013 to avoid fake people with fake degrees from getting posh jobs in Afghanistan. It seems there are many such guys already in the country.  Also, it seems Afghan nationals too have been using fake certificates to enter the job market. He also added that brokers charged anything from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 10,000 for a one-day service.

The latter was confirmed by a lawyer at Patiala Courts. There are thousands of Afghans studying in India, and it seems their government does not accept any education certificate from India unless it is attested by by MEA and the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD)! 

No wonder the brokers at Patiala Courts are laughing all the way to the bank.

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REFERENCES & LINKS



* Afghan Embassy - Visa Rules - http://newdelhi.mfa.af/consular-services-4/visa/visa-information-indians/working-entry-visa-wev

* MEA, India - Procedure for Attestation of Education Degrees - https://www.mea.gov.in/apostille.htm

* Apostille Convention - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostille_Convention